April to November 1955
On 2 April the whole station was on parade to celebrate the Royal Air Force Birthday Anniversary, with appropriate festivities taking place for the rest of the day. Coming shortly after this happy day, the week was sadly blighted by the death of one of No. 6 Squadron’s young pilots who lost control of his Venom at high altitude, got into a spin and for some unexplained reason was still in his aircraft when it crashed out in the desert. He was newly married and his young wife was at Habbaniyah with him. Mike and I had the heartbreaking duty of trying to comfort her on breaking the sad news that he had been killed. Good Friday turned out to be a very happy day, when Eve and the family arrived on the plateau airfield in a Hastings of Transport Command after a pretty rough flight through thunderstorms and turbulence en route. She and the two children were initially accommodated in the transit mess, but it was wonderful to have them near at last and be able to share all the fun and games that the splendid station had to offer. On the 16th we were invited to Air House to meet the AOC and his wife, and as No. 73 Squadron was about to depart to Cyprus, several farewell parties were in train, culminating with Flying Wing’s Spring Ball. On 2 May Royal Air Force Habbaniyah was handed over to the Iraqis with a formal parade and flypast by the departing squadron. Little did I think at the time what repercussions might be sparked off by this retreat of British forces from the midst of Arabia. It was hardly credible that within a few months of our going King Feisal and all his family, and our friend the Crown Prince, would have been murdered and the perfidious family of Saddam Hussein would later on be able to seize power in Iraq? And not more than a few weeks hence, Egypt’s Col Nasser felt secure enough to seize control of the international waterway of the Suez Canal.
It was perhaps of little value to speculate on such possibilities, but in the eternally volatile situation in the Middle East such eventualities were not inconceivable. It was the height of irony that after so many months of training with my Venom wing that one of my squadrons would be in action carrying out rocket and bomb attacks on Egyptian targets at Suez when I had only just relinquished command and was on my way back to the United Kingdom. It was particularly so as the family were travelling home by sea and we were almost trapped in the Canal. But that was in the future, and for the moment things carried on much the same, and relations with the Iraqis on the camp remained amicable.
On 5 May I was relieved to pass my annual medical, and on the same day was excited to hear that the caravans had arrived at the southern port of Basra and would be put on open trucks of the Iraqi railway for Baghdad. A day or two later, while doing a low-level reconnaissance down the Euphrates, I was able to intercept the Basra – Baghdad train, and there, low and behold, were two caravans on a low-loader truck ahead of the guard’s van. I was tempted to escort them right into Baghdad freight yard, but resisted the temptation and hurried back to land at Habbaniyah and find Simmo to tell him the good news. Our excitement was far more than if we had been allocated an ordinary married quarter, and we couldn’t wait to set our caravans up on the camp. The station commander had finally relented and agreed for a site to be provided for the caravans behind the officers’ married quarters, and electricity and water supplies would be laid on for them. Once we had received notification that the caravans were available for collection, I flew into Baghdad, and Spud Spurdens (Sqn Ldr Spurdens, my operations officer) followed by desert road in a Jeep fitted with a suitable hook. The caravans had travelled well and were undamaged, apart from a broken window apparently caused by a stone thrown by urchins outside the yard. After a seven-hour tow our van reached its future home, and amid great excitement was positioned and connected up to its power supplies. We had erected a structure of reed mats overhead, and the caravans settled nicely in the shade under them. In no time the families moved in and were very comfortable and content. Before I could do much towards the move in, an urgent call was made to collect a patient from the K.3 Oil Station. I took off in the Pembroke with Earnie (Sqn Ldr Earnshaw), my air traffic controller, and a medico called Stewart, and set course for K.3, following the pipeline that was clearly visible from the air. The flight was uneventful and the patient was safely delivered to the Habbaniyah Hospital within two and a half hours of the call-out. The next day I took off in a Venom to watch the No. 6 Squadron flying team rehearsing an aerobatic programme that they would be demonstrating at various stages during a forthcoming flag-waving flight down to the Cape. I told Mike that I was very impressed with their formation aerobatics, but made sure that he didn’t get too big-headed by reminding him that his show wasn’t quite up to the stuff that in my day used to be done, when nine Furies were looped and rolled in formation and tied together from take-off to landing! Nevertheless, on 24 May, with justifiable pride, Mike took off with four Venoms for Amman, the first leg of Exercise Quick Return Six that would take them down to the Cape. With a supporting Valletta, they staged through Khartoum, Entebbe, Tanganyika, Pretoria and finally to Ysterplaat outside Cape Town. The squadron carried out a demonstration of formation aerobatics at most stops, both on the way down and on the return flight, and these were very well received and applauded on all occasions.
On 12 June, which was a Sunday, we were all gathered around the swimming pool when we were thrilled as Mike led his three Venoms in to land back at Habbaniyah after a most successful flag-waving exercise, which did a good deal towards enhancing the reputation of the Royal Air Force down the South African route.
On 5 October I collected a Pembroke from the maintenance hangar, and with Flt Lt Green and a rigger airman took off to give the aircraft an air test after its servicing. Up to then I had never had any problems with the Pembroke, and was taken by surprise when, directly after take-off, the aircraft began a severe pitching motion, which as the speed increased became quite violent. I guessed that I was exaggerating the pitching by over-controlling, so I reduced speed as much as I dared and made a conscious effort to anticipate the direction of pitch and use very small control movements. I called the tower and received permission for a priority landing, and at the same time told my passengers to look out and see if they could detect anything unusual that might affect the control surfaces. They could not, of course, see the tailplane, where I thought the trouble probably was, from the cabin, and I did not want to risk a low pass over the tower to find out if they could see anything from the ground. I decided to try and get the aircraft back on the runway as soon as possible, as I had managed to reduce the rate and extent of the pitching, and had established better control. I approached the runway with plenty of power on to give the maximum airflow over the tailplane, and with wheels and flaps down I did my best to judge the hold-off as the aircraft pitched up and, with a fair amount of luck, made a tolerable landing. After relaxing with relief at the end of the landing run, I taxied in, switched off the engines and stepped out and walked round to look at the tailplane, but as far as I could see all was normal. Then my rigger said, ‘Come and look at this, sir.’ The hinged leading edge of the port wing, below which the wiring and controls for the outer wing ran, had not been secured after inspection, and it had sprung open and was acting as an effective air brake, to cause considerable turbulence over the elevators and thus the instability and pitching and a few nasty moments in the air. Clearly some unfortunate rigger had to be severely dealt with.
A few days later there was a station parade, and Black Mac (Gp Capt MacDonald, the new station commander) insisted on taking the salute while on horseback. If he had only known how ridiculous he looked he would never have undertaken the bravado. He was no horseman, anyway, but at least he did not fall off until after the march-past. Perhaps it was in an attempt to redeem himself that he flew the senior officers and their wives into Baghdad to attend a Reception at the British Embassy. After the party, Mac and I and twenty-five passengers assembled at Baghdad airport and scrambled into the Valetta, each somehow having acquired a ripe melon or two. The flight back to Habbaniyah was a little erratic, with Black Mac flying the aircraft and myself as second pilot in the right-hand seat. Despite a rather apologetic warning from me that Mac’s approach to the runway at Habbaniyah seemed both too high and too fast, he was oblivious, and the aircraft touched down well down the runway, so that it was only with a good deal of heavy braking that we managed to stop before its end. The near-hysteria inside the cabin was partly caused by the avalanche of ripe melons that were cascading down the central aisle, impelled by the deceleration, and bowling into the cockpit, where I was trying to field them and stop them from obstructing Mac’s efforts to retain control of the aircraft. It wasn’t his day or night!
The next day I took the Pembroke with seven passengers to Amman and on to Nicosia, and returned on the same day with Ben Boult and several others, ending with a night landing at Habbaniyah. A day or two later Clive persuaded me to take the Pembroke and try and rendezvous with him and his Desert Rescue Team out in the desert for an affiliation exercise. I did find him some miles south of Sulaymaniyah, and exchanged messages, and I dropped some urgent spares for one of his one-tonners.
The next day a call came in to air traffic that a Venom had forced-landed some forty miles out in the desert, so Spud and an engineer officer accompanied me in a Pembroke to try and locate the downed aircraft. We were soon able to spot it, and after a low flypast or two to examine the adjoining terrain we landed on the sand alongside the Venom. After assessing the help that would be required to get the aircraft airborne again, we took off for a return to Habbaniyah. I did two more flights out to the grounded Venom, landing on the desert strip alongside and off-loading some engine fitters. On the second trip I took Peter with me, and he then flew out the restored Venom and I took the remaining personnel off in the Pembroke and returned them to Habbaniyah. The next day I flew Arthur Ryall to Mosul via Baghdad and returned in time for a guest night in Flying Wing’s mess. On 4 July I flew Eve and family in a Valetta to Amman for a few days’ leave. We stayed in Mike and Barbara’s flat there, which was fine except that water was only available in the middle of the night, when one had to rush to the tank and collect it. One day we took a taxi out to Jerash, a Roman town whose remains still held the magic of their ancient civilization. We spent half the day among its crumbling buildings and aged stones. On our return to Habbaniyah we were sorry to have to say goodbye to our good friends, Ben and Peggy (Boult), who were off to Akrotiri in Cyprus.
On the flying side our original Venom 4s were now being replaced by the new, more powerful Venom FB20, which had power controls and was consequently far more manoeuvrable and pleasant to fly. On 20 July I had my first flight in the FB20, and was duly impressed. The next day Mike flew me in the Meteor 7 for my instrument rating test, and I coerced him into awarding me a Master Green, a rating that I managed to retain until the end of my flying days. We both celebrated in the Flying Wing mess that evening. And I went well content to bed. The next day great interest was shown when the first of the ‘V’ bombers, the Valiant, came in. Regrettably this type ran into early structural problems and was never a success as were the Vulcan and Victor bombers. In August I took the opportunity to have an instructor check me out on the Valetta so that I could carry out some flights to Amman and Baghdad in a bigger aircraft that could carry more passengers. At the end of August I took a two-week break to take the family for a holiday in Cyprus. We went aboard a civil Viking, ‘Lord Rodney’, flown by Capt Benson, and landed at Nicosia, where we hired a taxi out to Karenia and booked into the Dome Hotel. Our arrival in Cyprus coincided with the start of four years of guerrilla warfare against the British Administration. Since 1925 Cyprus had been a British Crown Colony, but now the Greek Cypriots were demanding union with Greece (Enosis), spurred on by the tyrant priest Makarios and the leader of the terrorists, Grivas. We were in Cyprus again in 1959, when I would be involved in the future political shaping of the island, but for now the situation was comparatively quiet and we were able to enjoy walking through the beautiful mountains of Karenia and swimming from its superb beaches. We returned to Habbaniyah in a Pembroke on 9 September 1955. The following week it was Battle of Britain Day, and the wing flew a large formation of Venoms and Vampires over Baghdad before returning to fly the whole formation over the airfield to salute the ground crews who had worked so hard to get the maximum number of aircraft serviceable for the occasion. After landing there was a cocktail party in the Flying Wing mess with a toast to ‘The Few’.
October saw several more Venom flights, including a reconnaissance of the Golden Dome at Samarkand, which was to be the location to make contact with Clive and the Desert Rescue Team. The next day I took the Pembroke out to rendezvous with them and drop some urgent vehicle spares. After a Meteor sortie a few days later to practice aerobatics and a bad-weather approach, Earnie and I set off in the Pembroke to search for a lost hunting party, who eventually turned up having found themselves trapped on the wrong side of the Euphrates. A wide error of navigation! They were Army!
There was a long-weekend holiday at the beginning of the month, when a gymkhana was held on the padang with jumping and tent-pegging competitions, and a parade of some fifty horses of various shapes, colours and sizes, but all Arabs. The star was the all-black Arab stallion Midnight, a truly splendid animal, very fast, a great jumper and yet of the gentlest disposition. At the beginning of November I took Earnie up in the Meteor to do a series of trials of the air traffic equipment and training for the controllers. On 3 November, in the middle of a rugby game versus Kuwait, Sir Claude Pelly arrived with Digger Aitkin (an old wartime colleague), and they were duly entertained in the Club. After several very happy and comfortable months in the caravan, the family were allocated a married quarter in Palm Grove. Happily we were able to sell our caravan to another family, who were very grateful, and it continued to rest in its shady corner among the palm trees, with the doves cooing over it and surrounded as always by the sounds of the cicadas and bullfrogs. But it was a joy to be settled in our tropical-bungalow-like quarter, particularly as we were expecting the birth of our third child within a few weeks.